FRAMEWORK AND SCIENTIFIC OBJECTIVES Contemporary culture has acknowledged the need for a paradigmatic shift that current globalization processes impose. The landscape with its strengths and weaknesses calls for a radical rethinking of the tools and strategies of transformation of the planet, which must be based on a different coexistence between man and nature. It should therefore be promoted in society the growth of a widespread awareness aimed at preserving and enhancing the common heritage of the landscape. The Ph.D. program in Landscape and Environment is oriented toward the training of scholars in the field of landscape design and theory. For these reasons the Doctorate in Landscape and Environment deals with studies and design issues concerning the landscape, within a theoretical and operational framework that has a long tradition, which has been further outlined, in recent decades, with the innovations introduced by the European Landscape Convention. In landscape culture converge multiple knowledge and skills that include historical-humanistic and technical-scientific aspects. The doctorate is therefore structured according to an articulated trans-disciplinarity, reflected in studies and research, as well as in the composition of the teaching staff and the skills of eligible students who apply. The themes of the PhD program even if they relate to a wide disciplinary field are organic and clearly defined. In the Landscape culture in fact they converge multiple knowledge and skills that include the historical-humanistic and technical-scientific aspects. In line with the statement of the art. 6 of the European Landscape Convention, which intends to support the awareness of civil society - being public or private entities - of the value of landscapes, the aims of the PhD Programme in Landscape and Environment are training and education of researchers and specialized professionals concerning the knowledge of and the intervention on the landscape. The ELC defines the landscapes' qualities, preservation and management objectives and indicates the actions to ensure, in a perspective of sustainable development "the government of the landscape in order to guide and harmonize changes which are brought by the processes of social economic and environmental development". Therefore, the PhD aims to promote the theoretical and critical preparation and the practical-operative training of researchers, capable of facing the multiple landscape aspects - and their interrelationships from small to large scale dimension - affecting the environment and the territory. The course, originally called "Doctorate in Planning and Management of the Environment and Landscape" was established in the XXV cycle. It is the result of a cooperation between the universities of Sapienza and Tuscia (especially between the Faculty of Architecture and that of Agriculture) with the Sapienza Department of Architecture and Design, the Tuscia Department of Science and Technology of Agriculture, Forestry, Nature and Energy and the Department for Innovation in Biological systems, food and agriculture and forestry. It is therefore a doctorate with a strong interdisciplinary character. The teaching staff is coming mainly from Sapienza and Tuscia, but it has been further strengthened with the entry into the College Board of two professors of the University of Molise. The PHD has also a longlasting relationship with CREA (Council for Research in Agriculture and agrarian economy analysis) and with CURSA (University Consortium for Socioeconomic Research and the Environment), institutions that also financially supported the doctorate in the past and in the present time. In the last year further opening to other institutions Milan Polytechnic, University Federico II of Naples, Mediterranenan University of Reggio Calabria and Université de Montréal have made the PHD program a reference for the themes of landscape at national and international level. COLLEGIATE BODIES The PhD is therefore structured according to an articulated transdisciplinarity, which is reflected in the landscape research and design practices, as well as in the composition of the teaching staff and in the different skills required to the students who apply for enrollment. In this sense it meets the accreditation criteria adopted by ANVUR with the presence of a collegiate body composed of at least sixteen members, of whom no more than a quarter researchers, belonging to the macro-sectors coherent with the educational objectives of the course. The Bodies are formed by the PHD Coordinator and the PHD Committee. Part of the educational and research resources that offers the PhD program are also three teachers from foreign universities and a Scientific committee of external scholars. The foreign teachers, renown scholars on landscape in their countries of origin, represent an important opportunity of international exchange, both for the phd candidates and for the teachers. The Scientific Committee of the scholars can further widen the disciplinary competencies and opportunities to offer to PhD students, because it includes not only other teachers, but also scientists from research organizations. The PHD Committee is composed of 22 professors from the disciplines of landscape, architecture and urban design, from urban planning, as well as agriculture and forestry, contemporary art. ISSUES ADDRESSED In the PHD Programme the main object of study and research is landscape, understood in its broadest sense of the complex physical and social relationships, open spaces and forms the environment configuration. As a result, the PhD aims to promote the theoretical and critical education and practical-operative training of scholars competent in addressing the multiple landscape aspects and interrelationships, at the small and the large scale, affecting the environment and the territory. The design and management of the environment in its various manifestations in fact play a central value for the sustainability of urban and territorial transformations and require people able to have a global vision, both in research and in the application, that can therefore, control and connect multidisciplinary aspects. It is in fact a domain that involves and integrates multiple disciplines, among which occupy a leading role architecture and landscape architecture, urban planning, ecology, agronomy, forestry, economics, sociology and art history. As summarized above possible contents for the PhD are: • planning, design and management of the transformation processes and the evaluation of their impact on landscape and environmental values; • critical evaluation of historical processes of formation of the sites in their natural and man-made components and their configurations and landscape modifications; • the acquisition of theoretical and critical skills based on the physical features, ecological-environmental and socio-cultural knowledge of the territory, using aesthetic, functional and operational principles; • the transformation of urban space in the context of the system of public spaces as places of maximum definition of sustainability in the broadest sense of the Aalborg Charter and as a tool for controlling the levels of human settlement to the large and the small scale; • the modification of the residual and marginal urban areas constituting the connection and mingling with the agricultural land; • environmental engineering, design, transformation and management of agricultural land; • Changes in land use, affecting several environmental processes such as erosion, water quality and biodiversity. In this perspective, we can say that a landscape is of quality and organic in its functional aspects, if "produces" soil conservation, quality and ecological connectivity. • the ecology of the landscape and the functions of the agricultural and forestry ecosystems, which are becoming increasingly important in recent years, especially when taking into account the progressively stringent limitations, in terms of the market and EU regulations , that agricultural and forestry production are meeting; • the rural landscape as a fundamental set of interconnected ecosystems and juxtaposed in a given territory; • the variety of systems and environments within a landscape, which is one of the most important elements and characteristic biological diversity, or biodiversity. • the structural diversity, which is also the basis of the complexity of trophic webs (within and between ecosystems) that control the flow of energy and matter, to regulate some important ecological functions such as productivity, the cycle and storage of nutrients, the hydrological balance and protection of the soil; • resilience of the socioecological systems at the landscape scale and the possible interventions for adaptation, mitigation and contrast to global changes; • another aspect, then, not to be overlooked, is the dynamic dimension of environmental factors, in a word, environmental changes at global and local level who are imposing to the world's attention in recent years as one of the most important problems of the present and, above all, of our future. Particular attention is paid to the training of experts who can work in Italy and Europe, in contexts characterized by many critical elements, such as that of the Mediterranean basin. Over a period of intense activity began with the XXV cycle, doctoral students have produced, to date, forty theses that belong to the following topic areas: 1. Historical and cultural landscapes 2. Urban and peri-urban landscapes 3. Agricultural, coastal, forest, river landscapes 4. Theories, critics and design strategies 5. Management, participation and policies 6. Climate, risk, sustainability Course requirements are therefore designed to give entering students a solid foundation in landscape knowledge, especially concerning its conservation or aware transformation, in the theoretical and design discourse. Sufficient articulation and flexibility will allow the initiation and pursuit of individual research agendas in an international and cross-cultural context. Within this, a wide range of research is supported through the varied expertise of the PHD Faculty Committee and Scientific committee of external scholars and through strong relationships with other Universities and Research Centers.